Payara Podcast – Java User Group Spotlight – JUG Oberpfalz

For this episode, I had a really interesting chat with Richard Fichtner, the leader of JUG Oberpfalz. Some of you may recognise Richard from many Java industry events, as he’s a frequent conference speaker, but he’s also known as the face of the JCon Conference as one of the organisers of this very popular Java event.

Richard is a Java Champion with 20 years of experience in the software industry. He’s the CEO and Principal Software Architect at XDEV, he’s actively contributing to the open source community through projects like RapidClipse and advocating for best practices in Apache Maven.

During our conversation for Payara Podcast, we talked about the history of JCon and JUG Oberpfalz, with Richard sharing some interesting stories about running both small, rural-based JUG, and a large, very popular Java conference. We discussed challenges that organisers of Java communities often face and how you can overcome them by perseverance, learning from your mistakes and most importantly – working together as a community and learning from each other’s experiences.

Tune in to learn more about Java Community with this episode of the Java User Group Spotlight with JUG Oberpfalz.

The episode is available on Spotify and on YouTube.

• JUG Oberpfalz – https://www.meetup.com/jug-oberpfalz/
• JCon Europe – ⁠https://2025.europe.jcon.one/